How Growers Can Prevent Iron Deficiency Chlorosis

prevent Iron Deficiency Chlorosis

Iron Deficiency Chlorosis (IDC) is a common soil issue in some areas of the country. IDCtends to occur in soil with high pH levels, which can prevent plant roots from reducing iron to a soluble state that can be used by the plant. The problem isn’t necessarily the lack of iron in the soil, but more importantly the type of iron that’s available in the soil for plant uptake.Iron is commonly in a ferric (FE3+) state when it’s in the soil, but the plants’ roots need to reduce the ferric iron (FE3+) to ferrous iron (FE2+) to make it soluble for uptake by the plant.

Why is Iron important?

Iron is critical to the development of chlorophyll within the plant. When iron gets bound up and is unavailable to the plant, it creates a chlorophyll imbalance and causes the characteristic yellow leaves in plants with IDC.

There are three indicators that help determine Iron Deficiency Chlorosis:

  1. High levels of calcium carbonate in the soil can cause IDC. The calcium carbonate particles can come in contact with the crop’s roots and neutralize the excreted acid (which helps with iron uptake by the plant), and can result in the plants’ inability to have access to adequate levels of iron.
  2. Salinity is another indicator of IDC. Soils with a high salt content should be a major concern for any grower trying to predict and combat IDC since IDC conditions are the most severe in saline soils.
  3. The third indicator is soil pH. The pH of the soil also has a major impact on the availability of iron for the plants’ uptake. When the soil pH is more than 7.5 it is considered alkaine. When this happens, plants have a difficult time reducing the iron to the soluble form (Fe2+) that they are able to use the to develop into a healthy and high yielding crop.

The Best Way to Combat Iron Deficiency Chlorosis is by Using Soygreen®

West Central Distribution developed an iron fertilizer solution called Soygreen® that uses the most effective iron in agriculture and was specifically developed for soybeans, dry beans, sugarbeets, sorghum, sunflowers and cotton that suffer or are at risk of suffering from IDC.

Soygreen is chelated with Levesol™, the purest and most concentrated ortho-ortho EDDHA chelate on the market. This is what makes it Soygreen the most effective IDC product in agriculture. As an industry leader, Soygreen’s ortho-ortho EDDHA chelate helps keep iron in its soluble state (Fe2+) for maximum uptake by the plant. In addition, Soygreen also makes other essential nutrients in the soil more available to the plant.

The following are some recommendations for using Soygreen to fight back against IDC and maximize your soybean yield:

  1. Use the highest yielding soybean variety along with Soygreen to get the best yields. IDC resistant varieties may have lower yield potential, so you might be sacrificing yield, which can negatively impact your profitability.
  2. Just because your beans are green, doesn’t correlate to higher yields at harvest. Soygreen increases and protects yield potential keeping beans green and healthy all season. Imitators can spark an initial green-up, but fail to deliver the same yield results.
  3. Soygreen increases and protects yield potential, throughout the season. Even mild cases of IDC can rob your yield by up to 50%.
  4. There are imitator products are out there, so don’t be deceived.
    • Soygreen has been successfully battling IDC for fourteen years.
    • As the industry leader, Soygreen contains the highest percent of chelated iron (5.41%) and the highest percentage of water soluble, stable iron in the industry (80%).
    • Beware of imitators who claim to be as effective. Imitators only have 2.92% or less chelated iron and only 47% water-soluble, soil stable iron. They may even claim to be less expensive, but actually cost more because they need to be applied at higher rates.
How Soygreen prevents Iron Deficiency Chlorosis How Soygreen prevents Iron Deficiency Chlorosis

Read more about how a grower in Cottonwood, Minnesota used Soygreen with in-furrow application on his farm to achieve a great yield and maximize the return on his investment.

Original Source: Leaders of In-Furrow Technology, West Central

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